Example: where wet bulb temperatures are the new normal, air conditioning is as vital as air and water because you will literally die without cooling. “You can buy all the electricity you can afford” is not good enough.

  • w2tpmf@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Not one single person from Canada, Mexico, or Peru would refer to themselves or their countrymen as American. If you asked them if they were an American you’d get reaction ranging from laughter to insulted anger.

    Everyone on both continents with America in their name universally recognize the term American to refer to people from the US, and none of them have any desire to be changed the meaning to include themselves.

    Labels of this type don’tfenerally get used based on continent. Otherwise you’d refer to people from most of Russia as Asian instead of Russian.

    • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      It was a Mexican who taught me to be careful with the word “American”

      Most Europeans will accept that label, most Asians too. Countries like Russia or Turkey who are in-between are exceptions.

    • evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      I’ve heard (though I can’t say authoritatively), that while “american” is obviously used for people from the USA, “americano” applies to all residents of the New World in Spanish in most countries that speak it. Wikipedia seems to agree:

      In Spanish, americano denotes geographic and cultural origin in the New World, as well as (infrequently) a U.S. citizen;[13][14][c] the more common term is estadounidense (“United States person”), which derives from Estados Unidos de América